


Beds Are Overrated

by some1_around



Series: 5+1 Tony Fics [4]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Adorable Tony Stark, Attempt at Humor, Ceiling Vent Clint Barton, Cute, Falling In Love, Fluff, M/M, Sleep, Sleepy Cuddles, Tony is asleep for almost all of this, falling asleep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-08 20:38:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5512418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/some1_around/pseuds/some1_around
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Clint found Tony sleeping in unconventional places and put him to bed, and one time Tony found Clint and decided to stay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beds Are Overrated

1.

Tony Stark, if nothing else, is a burning ball of energy and coffee. At this point, Clint is ninety percent sure that the black drink runs through Tony’s veins in place of blood. But Tony is also a lot else, including but not limited to a genius, an inventor, the owner of a Fortune Fifty company, and a superhero. He has a lot of work – which is a very good thing, Clint knows, because when Tony gets bored, things tend to explode.

So Tony bounces around the tower on sugar or coffee highs and talks a mile a minute, blabbering on until Clint worries his tongue will fall out, and his fingers never stop moving, always have to be in or on something. It’s why during movie night whoever is lucky enough to sit in front of Tony always gets a massage or a back-rub – and Tony’s fingers are dexterous and skilled from years of practice and delicate work.

He’s loud and noisy and flashy and he burns calories like there’s no tomorrow, and still forgets to eat often enough that he might actually give Steve an aneurism one of these days.

His mind, same as his body, never shuts up and never slows down, Clint can see it in his darting and calculating eyes or the way when he finally does get down to the workshop genius inventions and ideas just seem to explode from him amidst shower of blue light and the whirring of bots. Clint _loves_ watching Tony work.

Clint watches everything though. And one last thing he can atone for is that with the quantity of work Tony does, the speed that he accomplishes it with, and the outstanding quality everything he does always ends up having, he should need to sleep at least twelve hours a day to regain the energy.

Tony’s sleep schedule, based on Clint’s observations, is roughly eight hours every two days, depending on whether or not he’s in the middle of a project. Then it turns to three or four days with no sleep at all.

His secret? Coffee. Black coffee. Cup, after cup, after cup, after cup, and it makes up three fourths of his calorie intake. But coffee can only do so much.

So the first time Clint drops from the vents to find Tony curled up under his desk where JARVIS tells him he literally collapsed from exhaustion, he’s not surprised. A little concerned, yes, but not surprised.

He thanks JARVIS for calling him instead of Steve on Tony’s behalf – the poor guy would never hear the end of it from their fearless leader – and sets about contemplating how he’s going to drag the genius out from the tiny spot he’s wedged himself.

“There is a bedroom adjacent to the main workshop, your third door to the left,” JARVIS supplies helpfully.

“Thanks,” responds the archer, eyeing Tony before going for the obvious plan of attack. Wrapping his hands under Tony’s armpits he drags the man out and across the shop, no less than astonished when he doesn’t wake up. He shoulders the door and throws Tony onto the bed, still sound asleep.

Clint smirks at Tony’s prone and sprawled form before closing the door.

That’s the end of that.

2.

It is so not the end of it.

The second time Clint stumbles upon Tony its right after a two day mission involving giant snake/hedgehog hybrids that Clint would prefer never to have to think about again. Thanks Loki. Long story short, the team is just arriving back from Siberia and none of them have slept in three days. Tony flew back in the suit and they’d all followed him back to the Tower, where they’ve been living for months.

Stretching out the kinks in his shoulders and back with a yawn, Clint bids his companions goodbye and heads off towards his floor.

He’s stumbling past his kitchen on his way to collapse into bed when he sees something shift in the corner of his eye.

Still on edge and a little jumpy from the mission Clint whirls towards the motion, gun drawn and aimed, finger on the trigger to face-

Clint lowers his gun.

Tony Stark is asleep on his kitchen counter.

It certainly not the strangest thing he’s ever seen, especially not after the last two days (right, never think about that again) but it still makes Clint freeze in his step for several reasons.

One (and why this is the first thing that pops into Clint’s head he will analyze later) is the fact that Tony came to his floor instead of the penthouse, common floor, or the workshop – all places that would make sense. He and Tony are friends, that’s for sure, but Tony has never spent any extended period of time on the floor as far as Clint’s knowledge extends, and there’s no landing pad on his floor, other than the balcony, but Tony is out of the Iron Man armor, and Clint doesn’t see it piled in a corner. That means Tony landed, took the armor off, and _then_ went to Clint’s floor. Which is weird.

The second reason Clint freezes is because, despite being the eyes of the team and snoopy as hell, this is only the second time Clint has seen Tony sleep when the genius hadn't been knocked unconscious. It’s strange to see him so… still.

And the third is because Tony is irrefutably, unarguably, and amazingly _adorable_ when he’s asleep.

His legs are sprawled out on either side of Clint’s sink, but he’s on his side, hands curled under his head to act as a makeshift pillow against the cold stone counter top. His cheeks are tinged pink with sleep and his muscles are relaxed. Every minute or so he gives a sleepy yawn and it takes all of Clint’s many years of assassin training not to _coo_ at the sight.

With a sigh, Clint forcefully shakes the realization off and moves forward.

“Come on, Stark,” he says tiredly, shaking the man’s shoulder once he’s within reaching distance. This earns him another yawn, but Tony’s eyes don’t so much as flicker. Clint sighs and shrugs. “You asked for it,” he tells the body, stealing himself for a second before he shoves Tony to the floor.

Clint flinches as he waits for the inevitable bitching. When it doesn’t come he squints his eyes open and leans over the counter. Tony is sprawled over the tiles and still very much asleep.

Blinking in shock, Clint shakes his head before caving. He crouches down and pull Tony from the kitchen by his armpits. He manages to shove the genius up onto the couch in his living room before finally returning to his room and collapsing onto his bed.

When he wakes up the next morning, Tony is gone.

3.

“How does he even fit?”

“I had no idea Tony was so flexible.”

“He’s really jammed in there, isn’t he?”

“That position can't be comfortable.”

“Enough!” Clint shouted, throwing his hands in the air and desperately trying not to burst out laughing because – _innuendos_. Oh man, the innuendos, and coming from the most innocent ones on their team – and they don’t even _know_. Steve and Bruce shoot him confused and mildly concerned looks with Natasha fights off the smile Clint knows is trying to make its way onto her lips. “That’s enough,” Clint repeats, more calmly than before. “We get it. Tony is in a small space.”

He glanced down at the billionaire as he said it. Tony had wedged himself into the small area underneath the shelf that held all their game consoles, curled in on himself tightly, still doing that adorable yawning thing.

Clint sighed and shook his head, looking back up to his team. Thor was off-planet, which Clint was grateful for, as he knew Thor would just have a million questions about how Midgardians preferred to sleep. He’d go after Tony first, but when the inventor would inexorably lock the god out of his workshop, Thor would come for him. So, that was to be avoided at all costs.

Sighing, Clint ran a hand through his buzzed hair. “It’s just a thing Tony does sometimes,” he tells them with a shrug.

Steve raised an eyebrow. “He’s done this before?” questioned the super soldier, tilting his head so he could actually see Tony.

“Yeah, I'm pretty sure he just runs until he physically can't stay awake anymore, and then just drops wherever he happens to be. And then, he’s out like a light,” Clint explained.

Natasha eyes him curiously. “He’s never passed out on me,” she told him slyly.

“Or me,” Bruce added, eyeing _Tony_ curiously. “And we’ve had many a long night in my lab.”

“Or-” Steve starts but Clint interrupts him with annoyed grumbles.

“I get it!” he exclaims. “Whatever. It’s only happened a few times. I just drag him off to bed and leave.”

“And do you tuck him in as well?” Natasha teases.

Clint glares at her. “Real mature, Romanov,” he tells her, sticking his nose in the air like he’s the example of elegance. “I’ll have you know I leave him drooling on the couch.”

“Sure you do,” Bruce says, a twinkle in his eyes. “And is that before or after you guys drink homemade hot chocolate and watch _The Notebook_?”

Clint turns his best wounded expression on to the max and turns to Bruce. “Et tu, Brucie?” he asks, sticking his lower lip out. “I thought you were above this. _I thought we were friends._ ”

Steve rolls his eyes at their ridiculousness but he’s smiling happily. “Come on guys, let’s leave the cleanup to Barton – he’s obviously the most experienced of us,” Steve grins. “Romanov, we’ve got a sparring session.”

“And I’ve got an experiment in the lab,” Bruce says.

“Hey, wait a min-” Clint begins to object but there all gone.

Grumbling, Clint begins the arduous task of wrestling a dead weight Tony Stark onto his couch. Once that’s complete, after a moment’s hesitation, he takes Bruce’s suggestion and turns on _The Notebook_ , before leaving the room with a smile.

If he’s lucky, today’s the day Coulson – or better yet Fury will drop by for a visit and catch Tony in his sticky situation. Serves him right.

4.

Fury sweeps back into the debrief room after the fifteen minutes he’d allotted for break an hour into the meeting, only to stop a step in from the door when he’s greeted by a roomful of giggling superheroes.

Thor is outright laughing, loud and boisterous. Bruce is leaning back in his chair and chuckling with Steve, who’s got a hand clapped over his mouth. Clint is sniggering so hard his face is turning red and even Natasha’s lips are turned up in an amused smirk. And Tony….

“Somebody tell me why Stark is asleep on my conference table,” Fury demands, eyeing the passed out genius who has half his face pressed against the Plexiglas surface of the table. The way Fury’s looking at Tony he may as well have been a bomb that was set to go off after an unknown amount of time, and Fury was trying to decipher how long he had.

The laughter is subdued in all of them except Natasha, who keeps the small smile on her lips, and Clint, who continues to gleefully snicker. “Stark does this sometimes,” Clint tells him, waving an arm at the sleeping man to show what he means. “Fall asleep in random places when he’s literally too tired not to sleep.”

“It’s kind of adorable,” Steve says fondly, reaching over and ruffling Tony’s hair and receiving no response from the genius.

Fury growls and moves to the front of the room. “Well somebody wake him up,” he orders. “I’ve got a meeting to finish.”

“With all due respect, Sir,” Clint says, sitting up a little straighter in his chair. “When Tony falls asleep like this, it’d take the Hulk to wake him up.”

“I suggest just leaving him there and letting him sleep,” Natasha added seriously, expression blank, only the twinkle in her eye showing how funny she really thought this was.

Fury rolled his eyes and growled, “This is ridiculous,” before grabbing the back of Tony’s head by his hair and hauling him up right. Tony winced a little and blearily blinked once at Fury. Satisfied, Fury let go – and Tony promptly fell forward and smacked his head on the table.

“Hey, knock that off!” Clint objected, reaching forward to check Tony’s head for bumps. “You’ll give him brain damage and we kind of need his brain.”

Fury grumbled a bit before pointing out the door. “Hawkeye, take Mr. Stark to the SHIELD sleeping quarters and report back here immediately.”

“Hey, why me?” Clint objected pulling away from Tony.

“You did say you’d done this before last time we found him under the coffee table,” Bruce supplied, grinning softly.

Clint glared. “Traitor,” he accused.

“Just get him out of here!” Fury commanded, pointing at the door.

Clint grumbled and stood. “Fine, but if someone hits me with a taser because I'm dragging an unconscious Iron Man down the hall, you will be hearing from my lawyers.”

Clint moved over and slid Tony’s arm over his shoulder and put his other arm around his waist. “Come on, genius,” he grumbled, leaving behind the room of giggling superheroes. “Let’s get you to bed.”

5.

Okay _fine_. Maybe falling asleep on a couch while watching a movie isn’t exactly _unconventional_ (as Clint has dubbed the list he’s forming in his head of all the times Tony’s done this to him) but Tony’s never done it before, especially since they haven't had a mission in a few weeks, and there’s been nothing major happening in SI or the avengers. And of course Tony didn’t fall asleep _just_ on the couch.

Clint studiously ignores the snickers of his teammates and focuses instead on intently watching the TV. He doesn’t acknowledge the fact that Tony’s head is resting in his lap, or the fact that genius’s mouth is pressed to his stomach. He pretends that the swirling balls of alien on the screen are the only interesting thing in the room. Certainly not how Tony is currently yawning, his jaw stretching wide and if he just rotated his head a bit-

Clint, through years of practice, keeps his burning blush on the inside and continues to ignore the laughter of his team. He has no idea where these thoughts are coming from. Well, they only started after he found Tony asleep under his desk. But that doesn’t mean anything, no siree. Finding Tony just happened to coincide with Clint’s libido beginning to recognize that Stark was simply put a very attractive man.

Of course, there were the other thoughts to take into account, like how sometimes he dreamt not of sweaty skin, but sleepy mornings and watching the news in bed with Tony while they devoured muffins. Or how the last time a mission had dragged him into a shopping center he’d seen an Iron Man hoodie and had had the strongest impulse to buy it. Those were just weird, completely platonic thoughts that had nothing to do with his growing – fondness for a certain resident genius. None at all.

Clint didn’t register that the movie had ended – not that he had any clue what had happened in the rest of it – until Steve leaned over the back of the couch to ruffle Clint’s hair. “Hey bud,” he said once Clint was looking at him, eyes wide like a deer caught in the headlights. Bruce and Natasha were giggling behind Steve like the teenagers they truly were at heart. “Think you can handle tucking Tony in tonight?”

Clint opens his mouth to say something in response – something _clever_ , fuck you very much – but Steve is already ducking into the elevator with the others and calling out “Thanks!” while Natasha smirks coyly at him and wiggles her fingers in goodbye.

Clint’s frown deepens but when he looks down at Tony, it smoothes out a bit. Tony looks younger in his sleep, Clint thinks, running his fingers through the other’s hair, younger and a little more innocent.

With a sigh and nudges Tony off him and stands up. He contemplates the genius, internally debating whether or not to just leave him on the couch. In the end though, Tony does the yawn thing and Clint’s resolve is broken. He scoops Tony into his arms princess style and tries to ignore the way Tony nuzzles his head into the nook between Clint’s shoulder as he carries the genius down the hall towards the guest room.

While Tony isn’t as heavy as he probably should be – as previously stated, most of his calories come from coffee – he isn’t light easy, and Clint falters in his step when he comes to the first guest bedroom, hesitating for a moment before he continues on.

And the only reason Clint ends up putting Tony in the farthest guest room from the living area isn’t because it’s also the closest room to Clint’s, no it’s because – because that room has the freshest sheets or something.

Clint has no excuse for why he presses a kiss to Tony’s forehead after he pulls the blankets around the genius’ shoulders. He doesn’t need one as he firmly denies any accusations that he ever did anything of the sort, despite video evidence Tony has provided.

Clint also denies that he stood in the doorway watching Tony sleep for a minute with a soft smile on his lips before whispering goodnight and turning off the lights.

+1

“Stupid training drills, stupid Captain America, stupid vents,” Tony grumbles, wiggling around and turning a corner in the stainless steal air vents of the Tower. “Stupid, ridiculous scenario training,” he grumbles and he jolts around, ungracefully making his way through the building and towards the designated spot Steve said he had to reach.

Most of the time Steve left Tony alone when it came to training as Tony had proven to him that he knew plenty of hand-to-hand combat techniques, and that his running stamina was actually really impressive. Not to mention the physical labor and agility training it actually required to work the suit. But today for whatever reason, Steve had called him down to the gym where the good ol’ Captain and Natasha had ordered him into the vents with strict instructions on what to do. Tony had gone, mostly because Natasha had a maniacal glint in her eye that forebode something Tony got the feeling he wouldn’t like at all.

So here he was, crawling through vents he’d designed –specifically big enough for a grown adult to crawl around in despite the security risk because he knew Clint loved to hang up here for whatever reason (Tony, personally, didn’t see the charm). Because he was a _giver_ like that. And he seemed to frequently do ridiculous and stupid things when it came to one sarcastic, snarky archer. Things like fall asleep on him during movie night which Tony was _never_ going to live down – not so long as Bruce and Natasha had a say about it.

He did random shit for Clint a lot now that he was thinking about it. He designed nearly twice the number of toys for his favorite bowman than he did for any of the other Avengers – and he didn’t get anywhere near to skimping when it came to them. And he let Clint steal his popcorn on movie night. And he gave Clint the pass codes to the lab without the other man even asking, because he enjoyed it when Clint dropped – literally dropped, as in _fell from the ceiling_ – in for a visit when Tony was working. They’d banter back and forth for hours without tiring and frankly, it made Tony relax. The archer usually had that effect on him, hence all the random falling asleep Tony had been doing as of late. It was weird, but around Clint it felt a little easier to let go-

Oh great, he was doing that thing Pepper insisted his did and he venomously denied doing where he’d go off on a random tangent about Clint for _no fucking reason_.

Tony needed to add that to his every growing list of ‘Shit I Need to Stop Doing in Regards to a Certain Obnoxious Archer.’ It was a working title. Number one on the list – _stop falling sleep around Clint._ That shit was creepy.

Tony, distracted by his own inner musings as he so often was, didn’t notice his company in the vents until he was literally right on top of Clint. Or, on top of his shoes.

Tony blinked down at the soles of Clint’s boots before he looked up. Clint was lying on his side in a much wider part of the vents, soft snores that were so quiet it was more like heavy breathing echoing off the metal.

Huh. This must’ve been what it felt like to be Clint, Tony decided, blinking owlishly at his sleeping teammate. Although, was it stranger to find to find your friend sleeping on your kitchen counter or in your vents? Vents, right? Then again, Clint had found Tony numerous times, so-

Tony shook off the completely irrelevant – or at least unnecessary – train of thought and focused on the view in front of him. Sleeping on the metal couldn’t be comfortable, and it was cold up here. If Tony were a decent person, he’d wake Clint up and send him back to his room to sleep in an actual bed, before finishing his training exercises for the day.

Then again….

Tony wiggled forward until he was facing Clint. The vent was just wide enough here to let them lie side by side, though there was a small risk of getting stuck and they certainly couldn’t do anything else. Tony mulled it over in his mind for a second before shrugging. What was the worst that could – he quickly shut down that thought. That was just asking for trouble.

Slowly so as not to wake the assassin, Tony wound his arms around Clint’s middle and pulled him gently against his chest. Clint gave a slightly harder snore and instinctively wrapped his arms around Tony’s waist, nuzzling into the genius’ neck.

Tony sighed contentedly and melted into the touch. 

Maybe falling asleep around Clint wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed it!


End file.
